Conventional autostereoscopic displays use arrays of lenses or parallax barriers or other view selectors to make a number of pixels of the display visible to one eye of a viewing person and to make a number of other pixels of the display visible to the other eye of the viewing person. By isolating the pixels of the display visible to each eye, the two components of a stereoscopic image can be presented on the display.
Since an ordinary viewer's eyes are side-by-side and aligned horizontally, the array of lenses makes pixels visible according to horizontal orientation. As a result, corresponding pixels for the left and right eyes are located in the same scanline and displaced from one another horizontally.
Each eye of the viewer therefore sees an image whose horizontal resolution is halved in an autostereoscopic displays having only two views. In most autostereoscopic displays, field of view is improved by having more than just two views. In attempts to provide greater perceived depths of projection, many more views—e.g., 24 views—are required within a relatively narrow space—e.g., 1 mm. A typical LCD display screen has a pixel density of about 200 pixels per inch, though some have densities approaching 300 pixels per inch. That's approximately 6 pixels per millimeter, i.e., about one quarter of the resolution required to provide 24 views in a 1 mm space.
Thus, conventional video display devices are incapable of providing enough views in a sufficiently small space to satisfy the demands of modern autostereoscopic images.